Supermassive black holes are found in the centers of all large galaxies,
and the masses of these black holes are closely correlated with the
masses and other properties of their host galaxies. A major challenge
for astronomers is to understand how supermassive black holes and
galaxies co-evolved over the past 13 billion years. In this
presentation, I'll give an overview of work done by my group at Lick
Observatory to study the close environments of black holes in nearby
active galaxies using the method of reverberation mapping, and how these
observations can help us understand the cosmic evolution of black holes.

Aaron Barth

Aaron Barth earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1998, and then worked
as a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics and at Caltech. He has been a member of the UC Irvine
faculty since 2004. His group carries out research on supermassive black
holes and quasars, primarily using data from Lick Observatory, the Keck
Observatory, and the Hubble Space Telescope.